THE   LAND   POLITICS   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


A    PAPER 


READ    BEFORE   THE 


NEW   YORK    HISTORICAL   SOCIETY 


TUESDAY,  MAY  i,  1888, 


JAMES    C.    WELLING,    LL.D., 

PRESIDENT   OF  THE   COLUMBIAN    UNIVERSITY,    WASHINGTON,    D.    C. 


NEW   YORK: 
PRINTED   FOR  THE  SOCIETY. 

1888. 


X- 


THE   LAND  POLITICS   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


A   PAPER 


READ    BEFORE   THK 


NEW   YORK    HISTORICAL   SOCIETY 


TUESDAY,  MAY  i,  1888, 


JAMES    C.    WELLING,    LL.D., 

(PRESIDENT  OF  THE  COLOMBIAN  UNIVERSITY,  WASHINGTON,  D.  c. 


NEW    YORK: 

PRINTED  FOR  THE  SOCIETY. 
1888. 


AT  a  stated  meeting  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society,  held  in  its 
Hall,  on  Tuesday  Evening,  May  1st,  1888  : 

JAMES  C.  WELLING,  LL.D..  President  of  the  Columbian  University, 
Washington,  D.  C.,  read  the  paper  of  the  evening  entitled  "  The  Land 
Politics  of  the  United  States." 

On  its  conclusion  the  Hon.  CHARLES  A.  PEABODY  submitted  the 
following  resolution,  which  was  adopted  unanimously  : 

Resolved,  That  the  thanks  of  the  Society  be  presented  to  DR.  WELL- 
ING, for  his  able  and  highly  interesting  paper,  read  this  evening,  and 
that  a  copy  be  requested  for  the  Archives  of  the  Society. 
Extract  from  the  Minutes, 

ANDREW  WARNER, 

Recording  Secretary. 


OFFICERS   OF  THE   SOCIETY,    1888 


PRESIDENT, 

JOHN     ALSOP     KING. 

FIRST   VICE-PRESIDENT, 

HAMILTON     FISH. 

SECOND    VICE-PRESIDENT, 

JOHN     A.     WEEKES. 

FOREIGN    CORRESPONDING    SECRETARY, 

JOHN     BIGELOW. 

DOMESTIC    CORRESPONDING    SECRETARY, 

EDWARD     F.     DE     LANCEY 


TREASURER, 

ROBERT     SCHELL 

LIBRARIAN, 

CHARLES     ISHAM 


EXECUTIVE    COMMITTEE. 


FIRST    CLASS FOR    ONE    YEAR,    ENDING    1889. 

JOHN   A.  VVEEKES,  WILLIAM    LIBBEY, 

JOHN   W.  C.  LEVERIDGE. 

SECOND    CLASS — FOR   TWO    YEARS,    ENDING    1890. 

EDWARD  F.  DE  LANCEY,          WILLARD  PARKER,  M.D., 
DANIEL   PARISH,  JR. 

THIRD    CLASS FOR    THREE    YEARS,    ENDING     1891. 

BENJAMIN    H.  FIELD,  FREDERIC    GALLATJN, 

CHARLES    H.  RUSSELL,  JR. 

FOURTH    CLASS — FOR    FOUR    YEARS,    ENDING    1892. 

JOHN   S.  KENNEDY,  WILLIAM    DOWD, 

GEORGE    H.  MOORE,  LL.D. 

JOHN   A.  WEEKES,   Chairman, 
DANIEL    PARISH,  JR.,  Secretary. 

[The  President,  Recording  Secretary,  Treasurer,  and  Librarian 
are  members,  ex-qfficio,  of  the  Executive  Committee.] 


COMMITTEE   ON   THE   FINE   ARTS. 

DANIEL   HUNTINGTON,  JACOB   B.  MOORE, 

ANDREW   WARNER,  HENRY   C.   STURGES, 

JOHN    A.  WEEKES. 

DANIEL    HUNTINGTON,  Chairman, 
ANDREW    WARNER,  Secretary. 

[The  President,  Librarian,  and  Chairman  of  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee are  members,  ex-ojficio,  of  the  Committee  on  the  Fine  Arts.] 


THE    LAND    POLITICS    OF    THE     UNITED 

STATES. 


WE  are  all  familiar  with  the  large  part  which  was  played 
in  the  history  of  Rome  by  her  public  lands.  They  were  the 
seed-plot  of  periodical  public  dissensions,  and  bore  almost 
annually  a  larger  crop  of  political  agitations  than  of  economic 
products.  Every  school-boy  knows  the  successive  phases  of 
this  agrarian  struggle.  In  the  whole  of  Italy,  as  in  Rome, 
two  contending  parties  stood  perpetually  in  presence  of 
each  other.  On  the  one  side  was  an  aristocratic  party  con- 
tending for  class  privileges  and  proprietary  dominion  ;  on 
the  other  was  a  democratic  party  contending  for  larger  meas- 
ures of  popular  power  and  for  larger  shares  of  beneficiary 
right  in  the  administration  of  the  public  domain. 

Questions  of  land  dominion  and  of  land  distribution  have 
formed  the  ultimate  ground  of  political  division  and  debate 
among  men  ever  since  the  human  race,  in  the  evolution  of 
society,  passed  from  political  organization  on  the  basis  of 
common  blood,  to  political  organization  on  the  basis  of  com- 
mon territory.  In  this  western  world  of  ours,  from  its  dis- 
covery by  Columbus  down  to  the  epoch  of  the  memorable 
"  Monroe  Doctrine,"  the  partition  of  the  North  and  South 
American  continents  among  the  nations  of  Europe,  under 
alleged  rights  of  discovery,  of  settlement,  or  of  conquest, 
formed  the  great  animating  motive  of  maritime  adventure 
and  colonial  enterprise  for  more  than  three  centuries,  and 
gave  rise  to  that  tremendous  activity  which  was  then  dis- 
played by  the  commercial  States  of  Europe  in  the  fields  of 


6  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

diplomacy,  of  war,  and  of  international  politics.  What  is 
true  of  Europe  as  a  whole,  so  long  as  the  appropriation  and 
distribution  of  the  New  World  were  the  procuring  causes  of 
political  dispute,  is  equally  true  of  the  nations  established  on 
these  continents,  with  their  large  tracts  of  unoccupied  land, 
offering  a  perpetual  bait  to  immigration,  and  laying  the 
foundations  of  their  internal  policy  and  public  economy 
in  questions  relating  to  the  management  of  the  public  do- 
main. It  remains  to  add  that  what  is  true  of  all  the  Ameri- 
can nations  is  especially  true  of  these  United  States.  The 
great  leading  factor  in  the  formation  of  our  governmental 
polity,  and  in  the  subsequent  divisions  of  party  among  us, 
has  always  been,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  question  relating 
more  or  less  directly  to  the  distribution  of  the  national  do- 
main considered  as  the  source  and  seat  of  political  power. 
The  salient  features  of  this  perennial  controversy  will  engage 
our  attention  in  the  present  paper. 

The  early  cartography  of  North  America  was  wild  and 
fantastic.  Supposititious  "ways  trendin  to  Cathaia"  sup- 
plied the  places  of  real  bays  or  straits  even  on  Frobisher's 
maps  of  the  continent,  as  elephants  supplied  the  place  of 
towns  on  maps  of  Africa  in  the  days  of  Dean  Swift.  The 
colonization  of  America  began  at  a  time  when  so  little  was 
known  about  the  geography  of  the  continent  that  the  Lon- 
don Company,  organized  for  the  settlement  of  Virginia,  sent 
forth  Captain  Newport,  in  1608,  with  instructions  to  sail  up 
the  James  River  till  he  came  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  as  John 
Smith,  of  Pocahontas  fame,  was  urged  by  the  Council  to  seek 
a  new  route  to  China  by  ascending  the  Chickahominy.*  The 
dimensions  and  the  geographical  configurations  of  the  sev- 
eral colonies  were  not  only  involved  in  much  obscurity,  but, 
owing  to  the  ambiguities  of  speech  necessarily  employed  in 
the  attempt  to  describe  their  respective,  limits,  the  metes  and 
bounds  of  the  several  colonies  were  often  found  to  conflict, 
insomuch  that  large  areas,  owing  to  the  overlap  of  conflict- 
ing jurisdictions,  were  sometimes  claimed  by  two  or  three,  or 
even  more,  colonies  at  the  same  time.  At  the  beginning  of 

*  John  Smith :  Discourses,  etc.,  chap.  vii. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  7 

the  Revolutionary  War,  for  instance,  Virginia  asserted  a 
claitn,  by  charter  and  by  military  occupation,  to  the  whole 
northwestern  territory,  and  had  actually  annexed  a  large 
part  of  that  territory  to  her  dominion,  under  the  names  of 
Kentucky  and  of  Illinois.  Massachusetts  disputed  this  claim 
as  to  what  is  now  the  southern  part  of  Michigan  and  Wis- 
consin. Connecticut  disputed  it  as  to  other  portions  of  what 
is  now  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Michigan.  New  York 
disputed  it  in  part  by  virtue  of  claims  based  on  treaty  stipu- 
lations with  the  Six  Nations,  and  so  arrayed  herself  equally 
against  the  claims  of  Virginia,  Massachusetts,  and  Connecti- 
cut.* 

The  British  crown  was  the  ultimate  arbiter  of  all  dissen- 
sions arising  from  these  interfering  claims  so  long  as  the  col- 
onies were  in  a  state  of  political  vassalage  ;  but  when  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  came  to  break  the  bands  which 
tied  this  litigation  to  the  royal  throne,  the  Continental  Con- 
gress was  charged  with  that  high  umpirage.  It  had  been 
charged  with  this  duty  by  common  consent,  even  before  the 
duty  was  formulated  by  the  Articles  of  Confederation.  In 
the  Ninth  of  these  Articles  it  was  declared  that  "  the  United 
States,  in  Congress  assembled,  shall  be  the  last  resort  on  ap- 
peal in  all  disputes  and  differences  now  subsisting,  or  that 
hereafter  may  arise,  between  two  or  more  States  concerning 
boundary,  jurisdiction,  or  any  other  cause  whatever."  In  ad- 
dition to  this  jurisdiction  over  the  public  territorial  rights  of 
the  States,  it  was  further  provided  that  "  all  controversies 
concerning  the  private  right  of  soil  claimed  under  different 
grants  of  two  or  more  States  "  should  be  determined  by  a 
like  method  of  procedure. 

This  provision  of  the  Articles  of  Confederation  deserves 
to  be  lifted  into  prominence,  because  it  was  the  germ  of  that 
grander  and  more  comprehensive  umpirage  which  afterward 
came  to  be  lodged  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  under  the  Constitution.  A  High  Court  of  Admiralty, 
and  this  High  Court  of  Commissioners  created  from  time  to 
time  for  the  settlement  of  inter-State  controversies  about 

*  The  Public  Domain,  p.  161. 


8  ,  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

matters  of  territorial  jurisdiction,  were  the  only  Federal  ju- 
dicatures known  under  the  Articles  of  Confederation. 

Again  and  again  was  the  Continental  Congress  invoked 
for  the  pacification  of  public  and  private  strifes  about  land 
claims.  Even  before  the  Declaration  of  Independence  it 
was  called  to  bear  this  heavy  burden.  In  January,  1776,  the 
hardy  people  who  had  settled  on  what  was  popularly  called 
"  the  New  Hampshire  Grants  "  petitioned  Congress  to  rec- 
ognise their  independence  of  New  York,  which,  from  1749, 
had  asserted  a  historic  claim  against  New  Hampshire  to  the 
political  jurisdiction  of  the  region  covered  by  those  grants. 
When  the  Declaration  of  Independence  came,  without  any 
previous  ascertainment  of  the  status  of  Vermont,  her  people 
felt  that  they  had  been  left  outside  of  the  Union,  and  in 
1777  they  formally  declared  themselves  to  be  "a  free  and  in- 
dependent State."  In  the  unsettled  state  of  the  contermi- 
nous limits  of  New  York,  New  Hampshire,  and  Western 
Massachusetts,  so  far  as  they  bordered  on  this  Green  Moun- 
tain country,  there  was,  at  one  time,  a  conflict  among  all 
these  States  as  to  the  jurisdiction  of  parts  of  the  territory 
now  comprised  in  the  State  of  Vermont.  In  June,  1779, 
the  Continental  Congress  formally  intervened  to  adjust  this 
conflict  by  appointing  a  committee  to  advise  and  consult 
with  the  litigant  parties.  This  committee  failed  to  execute 
the  business  entrusted  to  it,  but  the  Congress,  on  the  24th  of 
September  following,  recommended  that  all  the  parties  at 
variance  should  "  forbear  vexing  each  other  "  for  the  time 
being.  The  Vermont  people,  however,  refused  to  have  their 
rights  placed  in  such  indefinite  abeyance,  and  boldly  announc- 
ed that  "  as  they  were  not  included  in  the  thirteen  United 
States,  if  necessitated  to  it,  they  were  at  liberty  to  offer  or  to 
accept  terms  of  cessation  of  hostilities  with  Great  Britain 
without  the  approbation  of  any  other  man  or  set  of  men,"  and, 
furthermore,  that  "  in  the  absence  of  protection  from  Con- 
gress they  had  not  the  most  distant  motive  to  continue  hos- 
tilities with  Great  Britain  and  maintain  an 'important  frontier 
for  the  benefit  of  the  United  States,  with  the  promise  of  no 
other  reward  than  the  ungrateful  one  of  being  enslaved  by 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States,  9 

them."  *  British  generals  and  emissaries  from  Canada  sought 
for  a  season  to  profit  by  this  grave  dissension,  and  to  detach  the 
people  of  Vermont  from  the  Continental  alliance,  while  certain 
partisan  leaders  of  the  Vermont  pioneers  kept  up,  on  their 
part,  a  shrewd  parleying,  now  with  the  British  authorities  for 
the  purpose  of  conjuring  the  storm  of  war  from  their  borders, 
and  now  with  the  Continental  Congress  for  the  purpose  of 
coercing  that  hesitating  body  into  a  compliance  with  their 
wishes,  and  a  recognition  of  their  territorial  independence. 
This  dalliance  alternately  with  Congress  and  with  the  enemy 
was  adroitly  pursued  by  the  Vermont  chieftains  till  the  close 
of  the  war,  not  without  much  current  aspersion  on  their  loy- 
alty, because  of  the  ambiguous  voices  scattered  in  their  dip- 
lomatic correspondence,  though,  as  we  may  well  believe, 
without  just  disparagement  to  their  patriotism. f  Alexander 
Hamilton  tells  us  that  even  the  States  which  brought  for- 
ward claims  in  opposition  to  those  of  New  York  seemed 
more  solicitous  to  dismember  her  than  to  establish  their  own 
pretensions,  while  small  States  like  New  Jersey,  Rhode  Isl- 
and, and  Maryland  betrayed  a  partiality  for  Vermont  in 
the  Continental  Congress,  until  the  alleged  connection  be- 
tween the  Vermont  leaders  and  the  British  authorities  in 
Canada  led  to  a  reaction  in  the  case  of  the  last-named 
State. | 

The  disaffection  of  the  Vermontese  spread,  in  1781,  to 
the  adjoining  counties  of  New  York,  and  created  a  revolt  in 
certain  regiments  enlisted  by  that  State  on  the  east  bank  of 
the  Hudson.  The  Vermont  government  seized  upon  this 
territory  on  the  Hudson  for  a  time,  but  speedily  renounced 
its  pretension  on  a  calm  remonstrance  made  by  Washington 
to  Governor  Chittenden.  Governor  Clinton  was  moved  more 
than  once  to  repel  these  aggressions  by  force  of  arms,  and 
Vermont,  on  her  part,  bated  not  a  jot  of  her  contumacy. § 

*  Williams  History:  of  Vermont,  vol.  i.,  p.  195.     Cf.  Vermont  State  Papers, 
p.  120. 

f  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.- 10.     Cf.  Vermont  State  Papers,  p.  142  et  seq. 

\  The  Federalist,  No.  7. 

£  William  L.  Stone  :  Life  of  Joseph  Brant,    vol.  ii.,  pp.  179-208. 


io  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

While  the  controversy  lasted,  no  quarrel  between  Highland 
and  Lowland  clans  in  Scotland  could  have  been  more  bitter 
and  inveterate.  The  echo  of  the  feud  still  reaches  us  in  the 
border  minstrelsy  of  the  time,  full  of  taunt  and  delight  of  bat- 
tle.* 

The  Continental  Congress  could  not  intervene  with  au- 
thority in  a  controversy  like  this  until  it  had  been  clothed 
with  plenary  power  under  the  Articles  of  Confederation  ; 
and  before  these  Articles  could  be  concerted  and  ratified 
among  all  the  thirteen  States  a  much  larger  question  of  ter- 
ritorial politics  had  to  be  settled. 

It  has  been  already  intimated  that  many  of  the  States, 
under  the  terms  of  their  respective  charters,  held  vast  unap- 

*  Here  are  a  few  snatches  from  one  of  these  Tyrtaean  lyrics  : 

Ho  !  all  to  the  borders,  Vermonters,  come  down, 

With  your  breeches  of  deerskin  and  jackets  of  brown  ; 

With  your  red  woollen  caps  and  your  moccasins,  come 
To  the  gathering  summons  of  trumpet  and  drum. 

Come  down  with  your  rifles  !     Let  gray  wolf  and  fox 
Howl  on  in  the  shade  of  their  primitive  rocks; 

Let  the  bear  feed  securely  in  pigpen  and  stall, 

Here's  a  two-legged  game  for  your  powder  and  ball. 

On  our  South  come  the  Dutchmen,  enveloped  in  grease, 
And  arming  for  battle  while  canting  of  peace  ; 

On  our  east  crafty  Meshech  has  gathered  his  band, 
To  hang  up  our  leaders  and  eat  out  our  land. 


Does  the  old  Bay  State  threaten  ?     Does  Congress  complain  ? 

Swarms  Hampshire  in  arms  on  our  borders  again  ? 
Bark  the  war-dogs  of  Britain  aloud  on  the  Lake  ? 

Let  'em  come  !     What  they  can,  they  are  welcome  to  take. 


Come  York,  or  come  Hampshire,  come  traitors,  come  knaves, 

If  ye  rule  o'«r  our  land,  ye  shall  rule  o'er  our  graves  ! 
Our  vow  is  recorded,  our  banner  is  unfurled, 

In  the  name  of  VERMONT  -we  defy  all  the  -world! 

-HENRY  W.  DE  Puv:  Ethan  Allen  and  the  Green  Mountain  Heroes  of '76, 
p.  405.  "Crafty  Meshech"  in  the  third  stanza  refers  to  Meshech  Weare, 
President  of  the  Council  of  New  Hampshire. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  1 1 

propriated  tracts  of  land  in  the  unexplored  Western  country, 
extending  in  some  cases  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
Oceans.  By  some  of  these  States  it  was  at  first  claimed 
that,  on  the  dissolution  of  the  tie  which  had  formerly  bound 
them  to  the  Mother  Country,  each  separate  State  succeeded 
to  the  right  of  eminent  domain  previously  vested  in  the 
Crown.  The  States  so  situated  were  quick  to  see,  in  the 
prospective  sales  of  their  boundless  landed  possessions,  avast 
capital  from  which  they  could  indemnify  themselves  for  all 
the  losses  and  expenditures  which  fell  to  their  share  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  Revolutionary  War.  But  the  States  whose 
metes  and  bounds  were  not  of  this  expansible  character  were 
just  as  quick  to  protest  against  the  rank  injustice  of  such  a 
pretension.  They  held  that  as  each  State  could  hope  to  suc- 
ceed to  the  usufruct  of  its  unoccupied  lands  only  after  the 
achievement  of  independence  by  the  expenditure  of  the 
blood  and  treasure  of  all  the  States,  it  was  no  less  just  than 
logical  that  all  such  lands  should  be  held  and  considered  as 
the  common  possession  of  the  United  States,  to  be  admin- 
istered by  Congress,  and  to  be  sold  for  the  common  benefit 
of  the  Union. 

The  landed  States  were  slow  to  relax  their  grasp  on  their 
territorial  possessions  as  the  price  of  the  Union.  The  land- 
less States  were  slow  to  pay  the  price  of  Union  at  the  ex- 
pense of  their  rightful  share  in  these  lands.  Even  when  New 
Jersey  and  Delaware  acceded  to  the  Confederation  without 
having  first  obtained  a  cession  of  these  lands,  they  did  so 
in  the  avowed  hope  and  expectation  that  the  landed  States 
would  ultimately  respond  to  the  call  of  patriotism  in  this 
matter.  But  Maryland,  as  we  all  know,  was  more  persistent 
in  refusing  to  ratify  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  and  from 
1776,  down  to  1781,  kept  reiterating  her  demand  in  the  ears 
of  the  Continental  Congress,  that  this  vast  unoccupied  terri- 
tory should  be  ceded  to  the  United  States  as  a  common 
property,  "subject  to  be  parcelled  out  by  Congress  into  free, 
convenient,  and  independent  governments  in  such  manner 
and  at  such  times  as  the  wisdom  of  that  assembly  should 
direct." 


12  The  Land  Politics  of  tJie  United  States. 

At  first  the  Continental  Congress,  under  the  predominance 
of  the  powerful  landed  States,  had  treated  this  claim  with  a 
very  gingerly  reserve,  and  had  agreed  to  file  the  represen- 
tation made  by  little  Delaware  in  this  matter  only  on  condi- 
tion that  by  so  doing  no  presumption  was  to  be  raised  in  fa- 
vor of  the  claim  "  set  up  or  intended  to  be  set  up."  But  the 
discontent  of  the  landless  States  was  so  outspoken,  and  the 
refusal  of  Maryland  to  ratify  the  Articles  of  Confederation 
was  so  stubborn,  that  the  Congress  was  compelled,  in  the 
end,  to  implore  the  landed  States  to  heed  these  clamors  of 
their  less  richly  endowed  sisters,  and  especially  the  importu- 
nate demand  of  Maryland.  This  it  did  by  a  formal  resolu- 
tion under  date  of  September  6,  1780. 

It  is  known  that  New  York  took  the  lead  in  this  work  of 
patriotic  self-renunciation,  and  on  the  ist  of  March,  1781, 
ceded  her  lands,  with  certain  reservations,  to  the  General 
Government  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  States  then  in  the  Un- 
ion, or  destined  thereafter  to  become  members  of  the  Union. 
On  that  same  day  the  delegates  of  Maryland  signed  the  Ar- 
ticles of  Confederation,  and  made  the  organic  Union  of  the 
thirteen  colonies  complete.  But  this  consummation  was  not 
reached  until  after  the  Revolutionary  War  had  been  raging 
for  five  years,  and  until  the  revolted  colonies  were  almost  in 
sight  of  that  Treaty  of  Peace  which  was  signed  about  two 
years  later.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  it  was  an  agrarian 
question  which  wellnigh  prevented  the  Union  from  ever  be- 
ing formed,  even  under  the  stress  of  the  great  struggle  which 
invited  the  States  to  confederate. 

And  no  sooner  had  the  Articles  been  ratified  by  all  the 
States  than  an  occasion  arose  to  tax  the  resources  of  our 
young  Continental  jurisprudence.  Not  only  was  Vermont 
the  theatre  of  an  agrarian  civil  strife,  but  also  in  the  Valley 
of  Wyoming  there  was  a  territorial  controversy  between  the 
States  of  Connecticut  and  Pennsylvania,  which  dated  from 
the  year  1754,  and  which  had  four  times  rolled  the  tide  of 
battle  over  its  fields  and  hill-sides.  In  1782  a  High  Court  of 
Commissioners  was  appointed  by  Congress  to  sit  in  Trenton, 
N.  J.,  for  the  arbitration  of  a  dispute  which  had  not  only 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  1 3 

drenched  this  valley  with  fraternal  blood,  but  which  had  more 
than  once  disconcerted  the  military  plans  of  Washington. 
And  even  after  the  feud  had  been  superficially  appeased  by 
the  adjudication  of  the  Court  at  Trenton,  which  decided  in 
favor  of  Pennsylvania,*  it  broke  out  afresh  at  a  later  day  in 
the  shape  of  an  armed  crusade  proclaimed  by  the  Susque- 
hanna  Company,  which  claimed  to  hold  the  Wyoming  Valley 
under  authority  from  Connecticut,  and  which,  at  a  later  stage 
of  its  operations,  proceeded  to  recruit  armed  emigrants  for 
the  forcible  occupation  of  the  disputed  territory.  This  armed 
emigration  had  its  point  d'appui  in  Hartford,  and  was  hon- 
ored with  the  countenance  and  support  of  men  like  Oliver 
Wolcott  and  Ethan  Allen. 

After  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Great  Britain  had  been  signed, 
a  new  order  of  territorial  complications  arose  to  embarrass  the 
public  councils.  The  people  of  Vermont,  it  is  true,  relaxed, 
for  a  time,  their  pressure  to  be  admitted  into  the  Union,  and 
consoled  themselves  with  the  thought  that  the  Continental 
Congress,  by  denying  to  them  the  right  of  representation, 
had  at  least  forfeited  the  right  of  levying  taxes  on  their  sub- 
stance. The  troubles  in  the  Wyoming  Valley  proceeded,  in 
the  meantime,  from  bad  to  worse,  while  in  the  southwestern 
part  of  the  country  a  new  territorial  disturbance  came  to  per- 
plex the  inter-State  relations  of  that  section.  I  refer  to  the 
agitation  which  now  broke  out  for  the  formation  of  a  new 
and  independent  State  west  of  North  Carolina. 

As  early  as  1776  North  Carolina  had  provided,  in  her  Bill 
of  Rights,  "  for  the  establishment  of  one  or  more  governments 
westward  of  that  State,  "t  The  movement  had  gathered  such 
head  in  1783  that  the  foreseen  creation  of  the  western  part  of 
North  Carolina  into  a  separate  State  led,  in  that  year,  to  a 
motion  in  Congress  that,  whenever  a  fourteenth  State  should 
be  added  to  the  Union,  the  Articles  of  Confederation  should 
be  so  amended  as  to  require  the  concurrence  of  ten  States  in 
cases  before  requiring  the  concurrence  of  nine.\.  The  people 

*  For  findings  of  the  Court,  see  Journal  of  Congress,  vol.  viii.,  p.  44  et  seq. 
•f-  Ramsay  :  Annals  of  Tennessee,  p.  284,  cf.  p.  439. 
\  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  92. 


14  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

inhabiting  this  western  region  proceeded,  in  1785,  to  consti- 
tute themselves  into  a  State,  without  waiting  for  permission 
either  from  North  Carolina  or  from  Congress.*  Erecting  an 
independent  State  of  their  own  mere  motion,  they  at  the 
same  time  created  an  independent  currency  of  their  own  in- 
vention, consisting  chiefly  of  beaver-skins,  deer-skins,  rac- 
coon-skins, and  such  like  peltries,  together  with  "  good  dis- 
tilled whiskey  and  apple  or  peach  brandy  "  at  a  fixed  valua- 
tion per  gallon,  while,  with  genuine  frontiersman  pleasantry, 
it  was  further  enacted  that  the  salaries  of  all  officials  in  the 
rising  commonwealth  should  be  paid  in  mink-skins  !  The 
State  thus  improvised,  with  John  Sevier  for  its  titular  Gov- 
ernor, took  to  itself  the  name  of  Franklin,  though  in  the  pop- 
ular parlance  of  the  day  it  was  commonly  called  by  the  name 
of  Frankland — the  land  of  the  Franks.  The  Governor  of 
North  Carolina  soon  proclaimed  the  seceding  Franks  in  a 
state  of  revolt,  and  this  ban  of  incivism  was  straightway 
met  by  a  doughty  counterblast  from  Governor  Sevier.  The 
agrarian  secession  spread  even  to  the  adjoining  counties  of 
Southwestern  Virginia,  and  drew  an  indignant  remonstrance 
from  Patrick  Henry,  then  Governor  of  Virginia,  whose  Leg- 
islature had  just  passed  an  act  making  it  treason  to  erect  a 
new  State  in  any  part  of  her  territory  without  first  obtaining 
permission  from  the  General  Assembly.  In  1785  the  new 
State  of  Franklin  began  to  treat  with  its  Indian  neighbors  on 
an  independent  footing,  as  also  with  the  Spanish  authorities 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  in  open  contempt  of  the  constitu- 
tional prerogatives  of  the  Continental  Congress. 

It  was  in  view  of  such  proceedings,  and  of  similar  mutter- 
ings  in  Kentucky,  that,  on  the  7th  of  October,  1785,  a  mo- 
tion was  made  in  Congress  by  Massachusetts,  and  seconded 
by  Virginia,  that  a  committee  be  appointed  to  prepare  a  re- 
port expressing  "  the  highest  disapprobation  of  Congress  "  in 
view  of  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  people  in  several  dis- 
tricts of  country  within  the  United  States  to  be  separated 
from  the  States  which  have  exercised  constitutional  jurisdic- 
tion over  them,  and,  further,  signifying  the  intention  of  Con- 
*  Ramsay,  p.  293. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  1 5 

gress  to  support  any  State  in  its  opposition  to  "  such  uncon- 
stitutional attempts  to  destroy  the  fundamental  principle  of 
the  Union."*  Mr.  Howell,  of  Rhode  Island,  proposed,  on 
the  same  day,  to  make  constitutional  provision  for  the  erec- 
tion of  new  States  within  the  territory  of  the  Union  by  so 
amending  the  Articles  of  Confederation  that  two-thirds  of  the 
existing  States  might  authorize  the  creation  and  admission 
of  new  States  carved  out  of  any  part  of  the  territory  of  the 
United  States,  with  the  consent  of  the  State  interested. t  Nei- 
ther of  these  resolutions  was  adopted,  but  they  serve  to  attest 
the  spirit  of  agrarian  secession,  or  of  "squatter  sovereignty," 
which  was  then  prevalent  in  different  parts  of  the  country. 

In  the  year  1786  the  seceders  of  Franklin  opened  negotia- 
tions with  North  Carolina  for  a  formal  act  of  separation.  In- 
vited, in  turn,  by  the  Governor  of  North  Carolina  to  return 
to  their  allegiance,  they  replied,  through  Governor  Sevier, 
that  they  "  would  rather  suffer  death,  in  all  its  various  and 
frightful  shapes,  than  conform  to  anything  disgraceful."! 

Meanwhile,  John  Sullivan,  a  soldier  of  fortune,  armed 
with  the  copious  dialect  of  a  swashbuckler,  was  stirring  up 
the  Franks  with  his  free  lance,  in  the  effort  to  enlist  their  co- 
operation in  a  filibustering  expedition  against  the  Spanish 
authorities.  Bringing  his  insolence  under  the  very  nose  of 
the  Continental  Congress,  he  addressed  a  rollicking  and  in- 
sulting letter  to  Gardoqui,  the  Spanish  minister  in  New  York 
City,  and  actually  proceeded  to  recruit  soldiers  in  South 
Carolina  and  Georgia  for  his  "  war  of  liberation/'  Writing 
to  the  Governor  of  South  Carolina  he  truculently  said  that 
the  period  was  close  at  hand  "  when  the  intrepid  Tartars  of 
the  West — the  inexpugnable  Kentuckians  and  the  Franks — 
will  dare  to  proclaim  that  the  Natchez  shall  be  restored, 
either  by  negotiation  or  by  arms,  and  that  the  right  of  free 
navigation  of  the  Mississippi  should  no  longer  be  withheld 
by  an  indolent,  jealous,  and  impolitic  nation,"  to  cite  the 
"  nice  derangement  of  epithets  "  with  which  he  characterized 
the  Spanish  court  and  people. § 

*  Journals  of  Congress,  vol.  x.,  p.  245.  f  Ibid. 

\  Ramsay,  p.  362.  §  American  Museum,  vol.  iii.,  p.  438. 


1 6  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

It  is  proper  to  remark  that  at  this  epoch  the  whole  south- 
western part  of  the  United  States  was  thrown  into  a  state  of 
ferment  by  the  well-understood  disposition  of  a  majority  of 
the  States  in  Congress  to  surrender  the  right  of  navigation 
of  the  Mississippi  River  for  the  next  twenty,  or  twenty-five 
or  thirty  years.  Seven  States — all  of  them  Northern  States 
— had  voted  an  act  of  tolerance  for  this  untoward  measure  ; 
not  willingly,  but  under  the  conceived  necessities  of  the  po- 
litical situation  as  reported  to  the  Congress  by  Mr.  John  Jay, 
the  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs.  The  very  sugges- 
tion of  such  a  policy  startled  the  whole  Southwest  from  its 
propriety.  The  Legislature  of  Virginia  lifted  up  its  voice  in 
indignant  protest,  and  declared,  November  29,  1786,  that 
such  a  surrender  would  not  only  be  violative  of  the  natural 
rights  of  the  Western  States,  but  would  tend  to  destroy, 
"  that  confidence  in  the  wisdom,  justice,  and  liberality  of 
the  Federal  Councils,"  which  it  was  so  necessary  to  preserve 
at  a  time  when  men  were  working  for  an  enlargement  of  the 
Federal  authority.  From  that  time  forth  Patrick  Henry 
walked  no  more  with  the  friends  of  a  stronger  Federal 
Union.  Writing  from  the  city  of  Richmond  (Va.)  under  date 
of  December  7,  1786,  Mr.  Madison  said,  "I  am  entirely  con- 
vinced, from  what  I  observe  here,  that  unless  the  project  of 
Congress  [for  surrendering  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi 
for  twenty-five  years]  can  be  reversed,  the  hopes  of  carrying 
this  State  into  a  proper  Federal  system  will  be  demol- 
ished." * 

When  the  echo  of  the  proposed  surrender  reached  Mr. 
Jefferson,  at  Paris,  he  characterized  the  measure  as  an  "  act 
of  separation  between  the  Eastern  and  Western  country  ;  as 
a  relinquishment  of  five  parts  out  of  eight  of  the  territory  of 
the  United  States,"  and  as  "  a  clear  sacrifice  of  the  Western 
to  the  Maritime  States."  f  The  mind  of  Patrick  Henry  was 
so  "soured  "  by  the  project — the  phrase  is  Mr.  Madison's — 
that  he  would  not  even  attend  the  Philadelphia  Convention 
for  forming  the  Constitution,  in  order  that  he  might  be  en- 

*  Madison's  Works,  vol.  i.,  p.  264. 

f  Jefferson's  Works,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  105  and  153. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  1 7 

tirely  free  to  oppose  the  instrument  which  should  there  be 
formed.*  This  project  for  "  bartering  away"  the  navigation 
of  the  Mississippi  wellnigh  imperilled  the  ratification  of  the 
Constitution  by  Virginia  and  North  Carolina.  The  measure 
had  been  supported  in  Congress  by  the  vote  of  the  seven 
Northern  States  against  the  earnest  opposition  of  the  South- 
ern States.  It  was  discussed  in  secret  session.  In  vain  did 
the  Southern  delegates  implore  permission  to  advise  their 
Legislatures  of  what  was  meditated.  In  vain  did  Grayson, 
of  Virginia,  and  his  colleagues  protest  that  such  a  surrender 
was  a  breach  of  the  covenant  made  with  Virginia  when  she 
ceded  her  "  back  lands,"  because  it  would  lower  their  mar- 
ket value,  and  postpone  indefinitely  their  formation  into  new 
States  ;  that  it  would  deprive  the  Western  and  Southern 
States  of  a  natural  right ;  that  it  would  permanently  fix  the 
weight  of  population  on  the  northern  side  of  the  continent, 
and  operate  a  virtual  dismemberment  of  the  Union  by  oc- 
cluding the  Southern  States  from  spreading  westward  on  the 
territory  allotted  to  them  by  the  physical  geography  of  the 
country,  t 

The  Spanish  minister,  Gardoqui,  emboldened  on  his  part 
by  the  concessions  made  to  the  admitted  strength  of  the 
Spanish  position  in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  was  privately 
hinting  to  members  of  Congress,  with  a  jocoseness  exceeded 
only  by  its  effrontery,  that  "  the  people  of  Kentucky  would 
make  good  Spanish  subjects,  and  would  become  such  for  the 
sake  of  the  privilege  annexed  to  that  character."!  He 
openly  argued  with  Mr.  Jay  (playing  upon  a  well-known  sen- 
sibility in  New  England)  that  the  rapid  settlement  of  the 
West  would  be  injurious  to  the  old  States. § 

We  can  now  understand  why  it  was  that  William  Gray- 
son,  when  he  came  to  be  a  member  of  the  Virginia  Conven- 
tion which  sat,  two  years  later,  in  judgment  on  the  Constitu- 
tion, opposed  its  ratification  with  a  vehemence  second  only 

*  Madison's  Works,  vol.  i. ,  p.  264  and  283. 

f  Secret  Journals  of  Congress,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  44-130. 

\  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  97. 

£  Secret  Journals  of  Congress,  vol.  iv.,  p.  52. 

2 


1 8  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

to  that  of  Patrick  Henry.  Referring  to  this  very  issue,  Gray- 
son  exclaimed,  in  the  Virginia  Convention  :  "  I  look  upon 
this  as  a  contest  for  empire.  .  .  .  This  contest  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi involves  this  great  national  contest — that  is,  whether 
one  part  of  the  continent  shall  govern  the  other.  The 
Northern  States  have  the  majority,  and  will  endeavor  to  retain 
it.  This  is,  therefore,  a  contest  for  dominion,  for  empire."  * 
Patrick  Henry  cited  this  same  sectional  spectre,  in  order  to 
frighten  the  Virginia  Convention  from  the  ratification  of  the 
Constitution.  He  said  :  "  To  preserve  the  balance  of  Amer- 
ican power,  it  is  essentially  necessary  that  the  right  of  the 
Mississippi  should  be  secured.  .  .  .  But  the  settlement 
of  the  country  will  not  be  warranted  by  the  new  Constitution, 
if  it  will  not  be  forbidden  by  it."  f  Colonel  Bloodvvorth  con- 
jured up  the  same  spectre  in  the  North  Carolina  Convention, 
for  he,  too,  had  been  a  member  of  the  Continental  Congress 
of  1786,  when  the  seven  Northern  States  were  willing  to  ac- 
cept this  provisional  surrender.  "  When  I  was  in  Congress," 
he  said,  "  the  Southern  and  the  Northern  interests  divided 
at  the  Susquehanna."  \ 

North  Carolina,  we  know,  declined,  on  the  1st  of  August, 
1788,  to  ratify  the  Constitution,  and  largely  because  of  mis- 
givings on  this  subject.  Hence  it  was  that,  with  the  view  of 
quieting  these  misgivings,  the  Continental  Congress,  on  a 
motion  made  by  her  delegates,  solemnly  resolved,  on  the 
i6th  of  September,  1788,  that  the  rumored  disposition  of 
Congress  to  surrender  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  was 
[then]  unfounded  ;  that  the  free  navigation  of  that  river  was 
a  clear  and  essential  right  of  the  United  States  ;  and  that  no 
further  proceedings  should  be  had  in  pursuance  of  the  nego- 
tiations authorized  to  be  undertaken  by  Mr.  Jay  in  1786.^ 
In  the  meantime  eleven  States  had  ratified  the  Constitution, 
and  so  the  whole  subject  of  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi 
was  handed  over  to  the  new  Government.  But  Charles 
Pinckney,  of  South  Carolina,  who  had  been  the  file-leader  of 

*  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  Hi.,  p.  365.  f  Ibid.,  pp.  352,  353. 

J  Ibid,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  167,  186. 

§  Secret  Journals  of  Congress,  vol.  iv.,  p.  453. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  19 

the  Southern  opposition  in  1786,  was  careful  to  acquaint 
President  Washington  with  the  grounds  of  that  opposition, 
for  his  information  and  guidance  in  the  conduct  of  future 
negotiations  with  Spain.*  A  great  peril,  as  well  as  a  great 
panic,  had  now  been  safely  overpast,  but  we  can  see  that  it 
was  a  question  of  territory,  with  political  dominion  annexed, 
which  wellnigh  defeated  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  as 
at  an  earlier  epoch  in  our  annals  it  was  a  question  of  terri- 
tory, with  political  dominion  annexed,  which  had  long  balked 
the  ratification  of  the  Articles  of  Confederation. 

In  justice  to  Mr.  Jay,  it  should  here  be  added  that,  with 
the  candor  which  was  an  integral  part  of  his  nature,  he 
openly  confessed,  in  1788,  that  subsequent  developments  in 
the  shape  of  political  "circumstances"  and  popular  "  dis- 
contents "•  had  interposed  to  render  "questionable"  the 
views  and  opinions  which  in  1786  had  seemed  to  him  "  ad- 
visable." t  In  the  game  of  applied  politics — often  a  calculus 
of  probabilities  among  contingent  events  and  imponderable 
forces — a  statesman  may  sometimes  show  more  wisdom  in 
being  fortuitously  wrong  as  the  event  turns  out,  than  in  be- 
ing fortuitously  right  according  to  a  drift  and  posture  of 
events  which  could  not  be  foreseen.  The  considerations  which 
had  reconciled  the  Foreign  Secretary  to  tolerate  a  temporary 
waiver  of  our  claim  to  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi,  as  a 
choice  of  evils,  in  1786,  were  national  and  not  sectional  from 
his  point  of  view.  Southern  men  like  Henry  Lee,  of  Vir- 
ginia, felt  and  acknowledged  their  full  force  in  view  of  the 
commercial  distress  which  then  prevailed  in  the  New  Eng- 
land States,  and  for  which  a  commercial  convention  with 
Spain  was  held  to  be  the  only  remedy.f  The  extremity  of 
that  distress  stirred  the  compassion  of  the  friends  of  the 
Union  even  in  South  Carolina. § 

No  wonder  that  Jay  deplored  "  the  private  rage  for  prop- 
erty "  which  at  that  time  was  suppressing  public  considera- 

*  Correspondence  of  the  Revolution,  vol.  iv.,  p.  300. 
f  Secret  Journals  of  Congress,  vol.  iv.,  p.  452. 
J  Correspondence  of  the  Revolution,  vol.  iv.,  p.  141. 
§  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  iv.,  p.  284. 


2O  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

tions  and  national  interests.  Few  people  at  the  present  day 
have  any  adequate  conception  of  the  wild  agrarianism  which, 
alike  in  its  private  and  public  manifestations,  was  prevalent 
in  the  United  States  from  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of 
Peace,  in  1783,  to  the  ratification  of  the  Constitution,  in  1788. 
It  was  not  only  in  Vermont  and  Pennsylvania,  in  North  Car- 
olina and  Virginia,  that  this  spirit  was  rife.  On  the  soil  of 
Massachusetts  it  came  to  the  surface  in  the  hideous  shape  of 
Shays's  Rebellion — a  sort  of  social  and  agrarian  Jaquerie. 
Suppressed  in  Massachusetts  as  a  rebellion,  it  lingered  as  a 
discontent  in  her  politics,  and  spread  a  leaven  of  unrest  in 
the  neighboring  provinces  of  Vermont  and  Maine.*  Among 
the  members  of  the  Massachusetts  Convention  which  sat  in 
judgment  on  the  Constitution  in  1788  were  eighteen  or 
twenty  men  who  had  been  in  Shays's  army,  while  many  of 
the  delegates  sitting  in  it  from  the  province  of  Maine  were 
"  squatters  on  other  people's  lands."  t  In  Connecticut  this 
popular  agitation  took  the  form  of  a  real,  or  affected,  fear 
that  the  Continental  Congress  would  seize  and  appropriate 
the  ceded  and  unceded  lands  of  the  West  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Southern  States.f  Convention  after  convention  of 
alarmists  was  called  to  emphasize  this  anti-Federal  clamor.^ 
In  New  Jersey  it  took  the  form  of  a  land-company  enter- 
prise, offering  special  inducements  to  encourage  immigration 
into  that  State,  for  the  avowed  reason  that  the  other  States 
had  not  sufficiently  considered  her  landed  rights  in  the  Con- 
federation, but  had — some  of  them,  at  least — reserved  to 
themselves  vast  tracts  of  unlocated  land,  by  the  sale  of  which 
to  avoid  their  comparative  share  in  meeting  the  burdens  of 
Federal  taxation.  ||  New  Jersey  had,  moreover,  a  special 
ground  of  offence,  because  the  Continental  Congress,  after 
having  affirmed,  in  1782,  the  right  of  her  citizens  to  "  a  tract 

*  Life  of  Timothy  Pickering,  vol.  ii. ,  p.  374  ;  Works  of  Madison,  vol.  i. ,  p. 
278. 

•f  Correspondence  of  the  Revolution,  vol.  iv. ,  p.  207. 
\  Stuart :  Life  of  Jonathan  Trumbull,  p.  640. 
§  Connecticut  Courant,  passim,  in  1784. 
||  See  Connecticut  Courant,  April  20,  1784. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  2 1 

of  land  called  Indiana,"  on  the  Ohio,  had  refused,  in  1784,3! 
the  instance  of  Virginia,  to  enforce  that  right,  or  even  to  en- 
tertain it.*  While  the  people  of  Vermont  were  weighing  the 
advantages  of  an  exemption  from  Federal  taxation  against 
the  disadvantages  of  political  isolation,  the  friends  of  the 
Union  in  recusant  Rhode  Island  were  mourning  the  loss  of 
their  share  in  the  proceeds  from  the  sales  of  the  ceded  lands. 
In  New  York  a  powerful  land-company,  with  John  Living- 
ston at  its  head,  was  bargaining  with  the  Iroquois  Indians 
for  a  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  years'  lease  of  a  large 
tract  now  embraced  within  the  limits  of  the  Empire  State — 
a  proceeding  which  was  solemnly  annulled  by  the  Legislature 
of  New  York  in  i/88.t  Kentucky  was  knocking  at  the  door 
of  Congress  for  admission  into  the  Union,  and,  at  the  same 
moment,  in  1788,  was  holding,  in  the  Virginia  Convention, 
the  balance  of  power  on  the  ratification  of  the  Constitution 
by  that  State,  and  so  was  in  a  position  to  decide  whether 
there  would  be  any  Union  worth  the  entering.:}:  In  Penn- 
sylvania the  insurgent  leader  of  the  Susquehanna  Land  Com- 
pany, John  Franklin,  had  .been  arrested,  and  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  year  1787  had  been  deported  to  Philadelphia,  that 
he  might  there  be  put  on  trial  for  high  treason  against  the 
State.  In  retaliation  for  this  arrest,  Timothy  Pickering,  the 
Quartermaster-General  of  the  Revolutionary  Army,  and  after- 
ward Secretary  of  State  of  the  United  States,  was  kidnapped, 
carried  into  captivity,  and  held  as  a  hostage  for  the  safety 
of  the  Connecticut  land-robber.  In  the  would-be  State  of 
Franklin,  John  Sevier  had  been  arrested,  imprisoned,  held 
for  trial,  violently  rescued  by  his  adherents,  declared  civilly 
dead  by  the  authorities  of  North  Carolina,  and  then  had 
gone  into  voluntary  exile.  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  were 
at  loggerheads  on  a  question  of  their  respective  boundaries. 
At  the  Muscle  Shoals,  in  a  bend  of  the  Tennessee  River,  a 
band  of  land-pirates,  composed  of  Spaniards,  runaway  ne- 
groes, Cherokee  Indians,  Creek  Indians,  refugee  Canadians, 

*  Journals  of  Congress,  vol.  vii.,  p.  278  ;  vol.  ix.,  p.  45. 
f  American  Museum,  vol.  iii.,  p.  448. 
\  Madison's  Works,  vol.  i. ,  p.  399. 


22  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

and  Tories,  had  long  terrorized  the  country  far  and  wide  in 
their  vicinage.*  The  impotence  of  the  Federal  Union  lent 
itself  to  all  forms  of  agrarian  disorder,  even  within  the 
bounds  of  the  oldest  and  best-settled  States  ;  for  something 
of  the  frontiersman  spirit  still  lingered  at  that  day  even  in 
our  Atlantic  States,  with  their  tales  of  the  border  rehearsed 
at  the  fireside,  not  as 

"  Old  unhappy,  far-off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago," 

but  as  a  vivid  reminiscence  of  recent  history  in  Indian  wars. 
The  whole  country  seemed  to  be  agonizing  in  the  last  throes 
of  political  dissolution.  Washington  wrote  to  John  Jay,  in 
1786,  that  more  of  wickedness  than  of  ignorance  was  mixed 
with  our  councils.  t  Jefferson  wrote  to  Madison,  in  1787, 
that  a  separation  of  the  Western  part  of  the  country  from  the 
Eastern  States  must  be  supposed  possible  at  every  moment.! 
Even  a  patriot  so  true  as  Richard  Henry  Lee,  sunk  up  to 
his  eyes  in  a  Slough  of  -Despondency,  could  see  in  the  whole 
United  States  only  "  two  very  unprincipled  parties,"  in 
the  year  1787  —  "  one  composed  of  little  insurgents,  men  in 
debt  who  wanted  no  law,  and  who  wanted  a  share  in  the  prop- 
erty of  others,  Levellers,  Shaysites,  etc.  ;  "  the  other  com- 
posed of  men  who  were  "  avariciously  grasping  at  power  and 
property,  Aristocrats,  Morrisites,  etc.,"  as  he  denominated 


While  these  local  troubles  were  becoming  more  and 
more  endemic  in  our  body  politic,  the  Continental  Congress 
had  provided  for  itself  a  vast  theatre  on  which  to  exhibit  the 
storm  and  pressure  of  a  territorial  struggle  for  political 
power.  Virginia,  following  the  example  of  New  York,  had 
completed  her  cession  to  Congress  in  1784.  After  the  pre- 
liminary articles  of  peace  had  been  signed  in  1782,  many 
delegates  in  Congress  had  urged  that  the  Continental  Con- 

*  American  Museum,  vol.  ii.,  p.  3  of  the  Chronicle. 
f  Life  of  John  Jay,  vol.  i.,  p.  243. 
\  Jefferson's  Works,  vol.  ii.,  p.  153. 
§  Observations,  etc.,  p.  37. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  23 

gress  should  proceed  at  once  to  define  the  Western  bounda- 
ries of  the  landed  States,  and  assume  control  over  all  West- 
ern territory  of  the  Confederacy  falling  outside  of  the  limits 
of  the  States  as  thus  defined,  without  waiting  for  cessions  from 
these  States.  In  this  opinion  the  delegates  from  New  Jer- 
sey and  Maryland  were  supported  by  the  great  authority  of 
James  Wilson,  of  Pennsylvania  ;  but  the  prevalent  sentiment 
of  Congress  was  in  favor  of  waiting  for  a  formal  cession  of 
the  Western  territory  before  concerting  measures  for  its  sale 
and  settlement.* 

As  regards  the  proper  relations  of  the  "  back  lands  " 
to  the  Federal  Union,  three  divergent  opinions  were  in 
presence  of  each  other  at  different  periods  under  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  Continental  Congress  :  First,  That  the  lands 
should  be  ceded  to  the  Union  for  fiscal  purposes  alone,  and 
that  each  State  should  retain  the  political  jurisdiction  of  the 
territory  which  it  ceded  ;  Second  (a  phase  of  opinion  which 
gathered  strength  after  the  preliminaries  of  the  Treaty  of 
Peace  had  been  signed),  That  the .  Continental  Congress 
should  take  possession  of  the  "back  lands,"  and  assume 
paramount  jurisdiction  over  them  as  of  natural  right,  with- 
out deferring  to  the  claims  of  the  landed  States  ;  and,  Third, 
That  the  Congress  should  adhere  to  its  declared  policy  of 
waiting  for  a  formal  cession  of  these  lands,  with  the  political 
jurisdiction  annexed,  before  proceeding  to  establish  regu- 
lations for  their  government,  t 

That  the  last-named  view  prevailed,  and  neither  of  the 
other  two,  is  a  fact  of  tremendous  import  in  our  political  his- 
tory. If  the  land-ceding  States  had  retained  their  political 
jurisdiction  over  the  territory  as  ceded  by  them  for  fiscal 
purposes  alone,  then  new  States  would  have  been  carved  out 
of  this  territory  at  their  instance,  and  not  at  the  initiative  of 
Congress ;  the  Federal  Government  would  have  lacked  a 
great  object  of  common  political  concern  ;  and  yet  would  not 
have  escaped  the  bone  of  contention  offered  by  the  partially 

*  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  83. 

flbid.,  pp.   59,  83,   87,   93.     Cf.   The  Thomson   Papers  (N.   Y.   Hist.   Col- 
lections for  1878),  pp.  145-151. 


24  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

conceded  territory,  for  the  contention  would  have  been  sure  to 
arise  on  the  proposed  admission  of  each  new  State  that  should 
have  been  formed  under  the  auspices  of  the  mother  State. 

If  the  second  view  had  prevailed,  a  strong  flavor  of  nation- 
ality would  have  been  infiltrated  into  the  Government,  even 
under  the  Articles  of  Confederation.  For  this  view  gave  a 
large  extension  to  the  doctrine  of  construction  and  of  national 
prerogative  right  as  against  the  assumptions  of  the  landed 
States.* 

So  soon  as  Virginia  had  completed  her  cession  in  1784, 
Jefferson  brought  in  a  bill  for  the  government  of  the  Western 
territory,  with  a  proviso  against  slavery  after  the  year  1800 
in  all  the  States,  ten  in  number,  that  should  be  formed  out 
of  it.  This  slavery  restriction  failed  to  be  adopted,  but,  with 
this  exception,  and  with  the  omission  of  certain  fantastic 
names  for  the  proposed  new  States,  the  Jefferson  ordinance 
was  passed,  April  23d,  1784. 

The  next  step  in  this  territorial  legislation  was  taken  by 
Rufus  King,  the  distinguished  grandfather  of  the  worthy  gen- 
tleman who  still  adorns  a  historic  name  at  the  head  of  this  So- 
ciety. On  the  i6th  of  March,  1785,  Mr.  King  submitted  the 
following  resolution  :  "  Resolved,  That  there  shall  be  neither 
slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude  in  any  of  the  States  de- 
scribed in  the  resolve  of  Congress  of  the  23d  day  of  April, 
A.D.  1784,  otherwise  than  in  punishment  of  crimes  whereof 
the  party  shall  have  been  personally  guilty.  And  that  this 
regulation  shall  be  an  article  of  compact  and  remain  a  funda- 
mental principle  of  the  Constitution  between  the  thirteen 
original  States  and  each  of  the  States  described  in  the  said 
resolve  of  the  23d  day  of  April,  1784."  t 

*  This  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  rights  of  the  United  States,  and  of  cer- 
tain particular  States,  in  the  "back  lands,"  crops  out  in  the  debates  of  the 
Federal  Convention.  It  was  at  the  heel  of  a  long  discussion  turning  on  this  dif- 
ference that  that  body  finally  decided  to  leave  the  whole  matter  in  abeyance  under 
the  Constitution,  by  simply  providing  that  Congress  should  be  empowered  to  make 
"all  needful  rules  and  regulations  respecting  the  territory"  of  the  Union,  with- 
out prejudice  to  "any  claims  either  of  the  United  States  or  of  any  particular 
State." — (Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  pp.  494-497.) 

f  Papers  of  Old  Congress,  vol.  xxxi.,  p.  327. 


The  Land  Politics  of  tlie  United  States.  25 

This  resolution  was  referred  to  Messrs.  King,  Howell,  and 
Ellery.  On  the  6th  of  April  following,  King  reported  the 
following  modification  of  his  motion  :  "  Resolved,  That  after 
the  year  i8oo  of  the  Christian  era  there  shall  be  neither  sla- 
very nor  involuntary  servitude  in  any  of  the  States  described 
in  the  resolve  of  Congress  of  the  23d  day  of  April,  1/84,  other- 
wise than  in  punishment  of  crimes  whereof  the  party  shall 
have  been  personally  guilty.  And  that  this  regulation  shall 
be  an  article  of  compact  and  remain  a  fundamental  principle 
of  the  Constitution  between  the  thirteen  original  States,  and 
each  of  the  States  described  in  the  said  resolve  of  the  23d  day 
of  April,  1784,  any  implication  or  construction  of  the  said  re- 
solve to  the  contrary  notwithstanding ;  Provided  always,  That 
upon  the  escape  of  any  person  into  any  of  the  States  described 
in  the  said  resolve  of  Congress  of  the  23d  day  of  April,  1784, 
from  whom  labor  or  service  is  lawfully  claimed  in  any  one  of 
the  thirteen  original  States,  such  fugitive  may  be  lawfully  re- 
claimed and  carried  back  to  the  person  claiming  his  labor  or 
service  as  aforesaid,  this  resolve  notwithstanding."* 

This  resolution  was  appointed  for  consideration  on  April 
I4th,  but  it  was  never  called  up  for  final  action. t 

Meanwhile  the  bonds  of  the  Confederation  were  grow- 
ing weaker  and  weaker,  and  the  disposition  of  this  public 
domain,  enlarged  by  the  cession  of  Massachusetts  in  1785 
and  of  Connecticut  in  1786,  was  seen  to  be  "an  obvious 
and  fruitful  source  of  contest,"  whether  in  the  Union  or  out- 
side of  the  Union,  if  it  were  to  be  dissolved.  In  the  Union, 
it  would  lead  to  a  contest  for  political  preponderance  between 
the  Northern  and  the  Southern  States.  Outside  of  the  Union, 
it  would  lead,  as  Alexander  Hamilton  forewarned,  to  a  huge 
game  of  physical  power  between  the  land-ceding  and  the 
non-land-ceding  States — the  former  trying  to  regain  their 
cessions,  and  the  latter  trying  to  retain  their  hold  on  what 

'Papers  of  Old  Congress,  vol.  xxxi.,  p.  329. 

\  Though  the  resolution  is  preserved  in  the  handwriting  of  Rufus  King,  his 
well-known  views  on  the  subject  of  slavery  make  it  probable  that  lie  was  over- 
borne in  the  Committee  by  his  two  colleagues,  and  that  for  this  reason  he  was 
little  inclined  to  press  for  the  adoption  of  the  regulation  in  its  altered  shape. 


26  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

each  might  regard  as  its  proportionate  share  in  a  property 
which  had  once  been  declared  common.*  After  two  abor- 
tive attempts  had  been  made  by  the  seventh  and  eighth 
Congresses  to  digest  a  new  plan  of  government  for  the 
ceded  territory  of  the  Union,  it  was  in  July,  1787,  when  the 
spirit  of  giddinesss  and  revolt  among  the  people  and  the 
States  was  at  its  height,  that  the  whole  subject  of  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  Northwest  Territory  was  reopened,  and  this 
renewed  discussion  it  was  which  led  to  the  adoption  of  the 
"  Memorable  Ordinance  of  1787,"  as  it  is  popularly  and  prop- 
erly called. 

This  ordinance  put  an  immediate  interdict  on  slavery,  but 
the  interdict  was  accompanied  with  the  proviso,  suggested 
more  than  two  years  before,  for  the  rendition  of  fugitive 
slaves.  In  this  shape  it  was  passed  unanimously. t  What, 
now,  were  the  grounds  of  such  a  surprising  unanimity  among 
States  which  had  previously  shown  so  much  jealousy  of  each 
other  in  this  matter  of  the  common  territory  ?  The  reason  is 
not  far  to  seek.  The  ordinance  of  Jefferson  was  comprehen- 
sive in  its  scope,  and,  applying  as  it  did  to  territory  to  be 
ceded  as  well  as  to  territory  already  ceded,  it  would  have 
been  applicable  to  new  States  formed  south  of  the  Ohio  as 
well  as  north  of  the  Ohio.  The  States  of  South  Carolina, 
North  Carolina,  and  Georgia  had  not  yet  made  their  cessions, 
and  the  Southern  States,  for  economic  as  well  as  political 
reasons,  may  have  shrunk  in  1784  from  committing  them- 
selves to  all  the  length  and  breadth  of  Jefferson's  anti-slavery 
policy.  But  in  1787  they  may  have  seen,  in  the  lateral  spread 
of  the  Northern  States  towards  the  west,  the  earnest  and 
pledge  of  a  similar  lateral  spread  of  the  Southern  States  in 
the  same  direction,  so  soon  as  the  opportunity  should  present 
itself.  It  is  certain  that  Southern  members  of  Congress  were 
quick  to  avail  themselves  of  this  territorial  precedent,  so  soon 
as  the  opportunity  did  present  itself  in  the  cession  made  by 
North  Carolina  three  years  afterwards.  ^ 

*The  Federalist,  No.  7. 

•f  That  is,  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  the  States.  Only  one  member  of  Congress 
voted  against  the  measure. 

\  Mr.  Madison  hints  that  the  primary  motive  of  Congress  in  restricting  the 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  27 

To  these  special  considerations  it  should  perhaps  be 
added  that  in  1787  Southern  statesmen  seem  to  have  looked 
with  more  complacency  on  the  westward  growth  of  the  Union 
than  Northern  statesmen.  The  one  solitary  vote  recorded 
against  the  Ordinance  of  Freedom  came  from  Abraham  Yates, 
of  New  York.  George  Clymer,  of  Pennsylvania,  with  the  or- 
dinance before  his  eyes,  did  not  hesitate  to  proclaim,  on  the 
floor  of  the  Federal  Convention,  that  the  encouragement  of 
the  Western  country  to  form  new  States  "  was  suicide  on 
the  part  of  the  old  States."*  "  Of  what  use  will  the  western 
country  be  to  the  United  States,"  queried  Fisher  Ames,  of 
Massachusetts,  in  1790.+  "  An  ineradicable  dread  of  the 
coming  power  of  the  Southwest  lurked  in  New  England, 
especially  in  Massachusetts,"  says  Bancroft. :{:  Many  of  the 
Eastern  and  Northern  States  had  "  back  lands"  of  their  own 
to  sell,  and  why  should  they  be  eager  to  impoverish  their  own 
fisc,  deplete  their  population,  and  lower  their  political  pres- 
tige for  the  benefit  of  the  West  ?  §  Gorham,  of  Massachu- 

spread  of  slavery  in  1787  may  have  been  not  so  much  to  prevent  the  interior  dis- 
persion of  slaves  already  in  the  United  States  as  to  discourage  the  importation  of 
slaves  from  abroad,  by  narrowing  the  space  open  to  occupation  by  that  unfortunate 
class  of  beings.  [Madison's  Works,  vol.  iii.,  p.  165.] 

*  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  487. 

f  Life,  Journal,  and  Correspondence  of  Rev.  Manasseh  Cutler,  LL.  D.,  vol.  i., 

P-  135- 

\  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  vi. ,  p.  263. 

£  It  was  to  these  States  that  Grayson  referred  when,  in  writing  to  Washington 
from  his  seat  in  the  Continental  Congress  in  May,  1785,  he  held  the  following 
language:  "  Several  of  the  States  are  averse  to  new  votes  from  that  part  of  the 
Continent  [the  Western],  and  some  of  them  are  now  disposing  of  their  own  vacant 
lands  and  of  course  wish  to  have  their  particular  debts  paid,  and  their  own  coun- 
tries settled  in  the  first  instance,  before  there  is  any  interference  from  any  other 
quarter."  [Correspondence  of  the  Revolution,  vol.  iv.,  p.  103.]  Nathan  Dane, 
it  is  true,  appeared  before  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  in  November,  1786,  and 
made  an  argument  for  the  proper  disposition  of  the  Western  lands,  but  he  consid- 
ered them  mainly  as  a  source  of  revenue  to  the  Federal  Treasury.  [See  full  report 
of  speech  :  Pennsylvania  Herald  (Phil.),  Nov.  29,  1786.] 

The  ordinance  of  1787  was  gratefully  accepted  in  New  England,  not  only  be- 
cause it  opened  a  path  to  freedom  and  enterprise,  but  also  because  it  opened  for 
the  States  of  the  East  a  way  of  escape  from  the  impending  peril  of  being  stifled 
by  a  spawn  of  small-fry  States  at  the  West.  Under  the  Jefferson  ordinance  each 
of  the  ten  States  for  which  it  provided  was  entitled  to  enter  the  Union  so  soon  as 


28  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

setts,  openly  avowed  in  1787  that  he  wished  to  see  the  Mis- 
sissippi shut,  for  the  advantage  of  the  Atlantic  States.* 

At  the  South,  on  the  contrary,  the  friends  of  the  Union, 
even  in  reluctant  North  Carolina,  were  exulting  in  the  pros- 
pect that,  because  of  their  "  large  quantities  of  uncultivated 
lands  "  the  Southern  States  would  soon  have  greater  weight 
in  the  Union  than  the  Northern. t  "  The  people  and  strength 
of  America,"  said  Butler,  of  South  Carolina,  in  the  Federal 
Convention,  "are  evidently  bearing  Southwardly  and  South- 
westerly."}: 

But,  apart  from  such  prospective  advantages,  there  was 
another  reason,  based  on  grounds  of  private  economics,  why 
the  Southern  statesmen  of  1787  easily  reconciled  themselves 
to  the  passage  of  the  ordinance  in  the  shape  it  finally  took, 
with  a  proviso  for  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves.  In  1785, 
a  committee  composed  exclusively  of  Northern  men  had  of- 
fered this  compromise  to  the  Southern  States  in  return  for 
the  inhibition  of  slavery  after  the  year  1800.  But  the  South- 
ern delegates  were  not  ready  at  that  date  for  such  a  transac- 
tion. The  transaction  involved  a  political  concession  on  the 
part  of  the  North — a  concession  made  in  the  well-understood 
hope  at  that  time  that  slavery  would  be  of  only  temporary 
duration  in  the  Union. §  The  far-reaching  consequences  of  the 
arrangement  could  not  then  be  foreseen,  though  it  must  have 

the  number  of  its  inhabitants  was  equal  to  that  of  the  smallest  State  already  in  the 
Union,  to  wit,  Delaware,  with  a  population  of  only  thirty-five  thousand.  Just  a  week 
before  the  Ordinance  of  1887  was  passed,  Rufus  King  referred  in  the  Federal  Con- 
vention to  the  urgent  necessity  of  altering  an  impolitic  arrangement  which  made  it 
possible  for  ten  new  States  to  be  added  to  the  Union  without  a  greater  addition 
to  the  population  of  the  West  than  the  number  of  people  represented  by  a  single 
one  of  the  original  States,  to  wit,  Pennsylvania.  This  consideration  doubtless 
helps  to  explain  the  unanimity  of  Congress  in  passing  the  measure,  as  also  the  de- 
spatch with  which  it  was  passed,  for  at  the  time  he  spoke  Mr.  King  expressed  a 
fear  that  the  evil  was  "irrevocable"  as  to  one  of  these  embryo  States.  Elliot's 
Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  280. 

*  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  103. 

f  Ibid.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  1 86.  \  Ibid.,  vol.  v.,  p.  309. 

§  Such  was  the  opinion  of  Oliver  Ellsworth,  of  Connecticut.  Even  as  to  the 
slave  trade  he  said :  "  Let  us  not  intermeddle.  As  population  increases,  poor 
laborers  will  be  so  plenty  as  to  render  slaves  usejess.  Slavery,  in  time,  will  not 
be  a  speck  in  our  country."  (Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  458.) 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  29 

been  seen  that  the  regulation  added  a  new  hardship  to  the  lot 
of  the  slave.  If  the  slave,  to  use  the  language  of  feudal  law, 
was  already  a  villein  in  gross,  tied  to  the  person  of  his  mas- 
ter by  the  municipal  law  of  the  slave  State,  he  now  became, 
pro  hac  vice,  and  in  the  eye  of  national  law,  a  species  of  vil- 
lein regardant,  tied  to  the  soil  of  the  slave  State  by  Federal 
law.  This  latter  feature  was,  however,  so  secondary,  as  com- 
pared with  the  former,  that  many  determined  haters  of  sla- 
very in  1787  seem  to  have  conquered  their  repugnance  to  it; 
perhaps  it  was  because  the  incident,  being  political  in  its  nat- 
ure, and  resting  back  on  the  -law  of  a  slave  State,  may  have 
seemed  to  involve  no  element  of  personal  responsibility  for 
the  status  of  the  slave.  Even  Washington,  with  all  his  re- 
pulsion to  slavery,  was,  says  Bancroft,  "  severe  "  to  the  run- 
away slave.*  The  best  men  of  the  South  in  that  day  were 
not  unwilling  to  regard  slavery  as  a  transitional  and  decidu- 
ous institution  ;  yet,  while  it  lasted,  they  wished  to  enjoy  the 
full  usufruct  of  their  slave  labor.  Hence  the  unanimous 
compact  made,  in  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  for  the  recapture  of 
fugitive  slaves.  By  this  compact  the  Southern  States  se- 
cured in  the  Northwestern  Territory  a  privilege  they  did  not 
possess  in  the  States,  for  the  States,  at  that  time,  were  "  un- 
charitable "  to  each  other  (as  Mr.  Madison  phrased  it)  in  the 
matter  of  returning  fugitive  slaves. 

But  this  proviso  in  our  Ordinance  of  Freedom  led  the  way 
to  a  portentous  after-birth  in  the  labor-pangs  of  that  for- 
mative epoch  in  our  annals.  It  was  the  precursor  of  the  fugi- 
tive-slave clause  which  came  soon  afterwards  to  imbed  itself 
in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Between  the  Con- 
tinental Congress  sitting  in  New  York,  and  the  Federal  Con- 
vention sitting  in  Philadelphia,  in  1787,  there  was  a  constant 
interchange,  not  only  of  ideas  and  proceedings,  but  also  of 
members  ;  for  a  few  members  of  the  one  body  were  members 
as  well  of  the  other  body,  and  so  the  fugitive-slave  clause  of 
the  Ordinance  trickled  from  that  instrument  into  the  Consti- 
tution, and  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves,  after  being  an 
"  article  of  compact  "  among  the  States  as  to  the  common  do- 

*  History  of  the  United  Stales,  vol.  vi.,  p.  179. 


30  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

main,  became,  nemine  contradicente,  an  article  of  constitutional 
agreement  among  the  States  as  to  their  common  Union.*  In 
like  manner,  the  clause  of  the  Constitution  which  forbids  the 
States  to  pass  any  law  "impairing  the  obligation  of  con- 
tracts "  took  its  norm  from  the  ordinance,  the  text  of  which 
was  expressly  cited  by  Rufus  King,  on  the  floor  of  the  Fed- 
eral Convention,  as  the  justifying  precedent  for  such  a  regula- 
tion, t  That  the  ordinance  fell  before  the  eyes  of  the  Phila- 
delphia Convention  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  it  was  pub- 
lished in  full  in  a  Philadelphia  newspaper,  The  Pennsylva- 
nia Herald,  on  the  2  5th  of  July,  1787.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact 
that,  in  the  original  documents  connected  with  the  passage 
of  the  ordinance,  as  still  preserved  in  the  Library  of  Congress 
at  Washington,  the  clause  providing  for  the  slavery  interdict, 
accompanied  with  a  proviso  for  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves, 
is  entirely  in  the  handwriting  of  Nathan  Dane,  while  certain 
other  amendments,  in  the  body  of  the  instrument,  looking 
to  more  liberal  rules  for  the  descent  of  property,  are  in 
the  handwriting  of  William  Grayson,  of  Virginia. 

While  Southern  statesmen,  assembled  in  their  State  con- 
ventions in  1788  to  pass  on  the  Constitution,  were  recounting 
the  advantages  of  the  South  under  that  instrument,  to  wit  : 
The  permission  to  import  slaves  till  1808,  and  to  recover 
their  fugitive  slaves  in  all  parts  of  America  under  Federal 
jurisdiction,  Northern  statesmen,  assembled  in  similar  con- 
vention, in  their  respective  States,  were  recounting  the  ad- 

*  Elliot's  Debates,  voL  iv.,  p.  286;  vol.  v.,  p.  492.  In  the  unanimity  with 
which  this  clause  was  adopted  Judge  Story  finds  "  a  proof  at  once  of  its  intrinsic 
and  practical  necessity,"  as  conceived  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  in  1787. 
"  Without  it,"  he  says,  "the  Union  could  not  have  been  formed." — (Prigg  case, 
16  Peters,  611.)  Judge  McLean,  on  information  and  belief  purporting  to  be  de- 
rived from  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  avers  that  without  it  "no  Constitution  could 
have  been  adopted." — (McQuerry  case,  5  McLean,  478.)  Such  negatives  do  not 
admit  of  strict  proof,  however  great  may  be  the  probability  in  their  favor. 

The  statement  contained  in  the  "Declaration  of  Independence"  with  which 
South  Carolina  accompanied  her  Ordinance  of  Secession  in  1860,  to  the  effect  that 
a  provision  for  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves  was  made  by  Virginia  "the  condi- 
tion of  cession  of  the  territory  which  now  composes  the  States  north  of  the  Ohio 
River,"  is  entirely  unhistorical,  so  far  as  I  can  discover. 

f  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  v.,  p.  487. 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  3 1 

vantages  of  the  North  under  that  same  instrument,  to  wit,  as 
Mr.  Wilson  expressed  it  in  Pennsylvania  :  That  the  prohibi- 
tion of  the  importation  of  slaves  after  1808  would  lay  a  foun- 
dation for  ultimately  banishing  slavery  from  the  country, 
while  "  the  new  States  which  were  to  be  formed  would  be 
under  the  control  of  Congress  "  [in  their  condition  of  terri- 
torial pupilage],  and,  therefore,  "  slavery  would  never  be  in- 
troduced amongst  them."  This  optimistic  forecast  of  Mr. 
Wilson  was  justified  by  the  facts  before  him  in  1788,  for  the 
two  Southern  States  which  insisted,  at  the  epoch  of  the  for- 
mation of  the  Constitution,  on  reserving  the  right  to  import 
slaves  till  1808,  had  insisted  on  that  right  for  the  benefit  of 
existing'  States  alone,*  and  not  for  the  benefit  of  any  new 
States  which  might  be  subsequently  admitted  into  the  Union, 
while  South  Carolina,  less  than  a  month  after  the  passage  of 
the  Ordinance  of  1787,  had  ceded  her  Western  lands  to  Con- 
gress, without  making  any  reservation  against  the  prohibition 
of  slavery  in  the  territory  so  ceded. 

But  North  Carolina,  by  her  deed  of  cession  in  1790 — the 
first  concluded  under  the  present  Constitution — was  careful 
to  make  reservation  against  the  right  of  Congress  to  establish 
any  regulation  tending  to  emancipate  slaves  in  the  territory 
so  granted.  Here  was  the  entering  wedge  of  that  great  dis- 
sidence  between  the  Northern  and  the  Southern  States 
which,  in  the  matter  of  the  territories,  was  destined  at  a  later 
day  to  rive  the  Union  in  twain  for  a  time.  It  was  the  first 
beginning,  under  the  Constitution,  of  that  long  politico- 
agrarian  struggle  which  finally  culminated  in  the  outbreak  of 
our  late  Civil  War. 

In  the  year  1798,  the  Congress,  in  accepting  a  cession  of 
land  from  Georgia,  volunteered  to  exempt  it  from  the  anti- 
slavery  clause  of  the  Ordinance  of  1787.  The  issue  between 
the  Northern  and  the  Southern  States  was  here  distinctly 
joined  as  to  territory  every  inch  of  which  fell  outside  of  the 

limits  embraced  in  the  so-called  "compacts"  of  1784  and 

• 

*  The  exact  language  of  the  Constitution  is  :  "The  importation  of  such  per- 
sons as  any  of  the  States  now  existing  shall  think  proper  to  admit,  shall  not  be 
prohibited  by  the  Congress  prior  to  the  year  1808." 


32  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

1787.  The  Congress  was  here  dealing  with  a  virgin  soil,  and 
could  wed  it  either  to  freedom  or  to  slavery  according  to 
its  own  will  and  pleasure.  Mr.  Thatcher,  of  Massachusetts, 
moved,  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  to  put  an  interdict 
on  slavery  in  this  territory.  The  motion  received  only  twelve 
votes.  In  the  presence  of  such  a  vote,  we  see  at  once  that 
the  idea  of  an  equitable  division  of  territory  between  the 
Northern  and  the  Southern  States  had  already  imbedded 
itself  in  the  political  consciousness  of  the  country.  This  idea 
was,  indeed,  openly  avowed,  in  the  course  of  the  debate  on 
Thatcher's  motion,  by  Robert  Goodloe  Harper,  of  South 
Carolina.* 

We  now  come,  in  the  order  of  time,  to  a  new  stadium  in 
the  portentous  progress  of  territorial  politics  in  the  United 
States — the  acquisition  of  Louisiana  by  purchase  from 
France.  That  that  purchase  was  abundantly  justified  by  in- 
dispensable considerations  of  national  safety,  unity,  and  expe- 
diency will  now  be  denied  by  no  American  citizen  ;  but  at  the 
time  when  Jefferson  effected  the  purchase  it  was  complicated 
not  only  with  grave  questions  of  constitutional  right  but 
with  still  more  burning  questions  of  sectional  politics,  arising 
from  the  antagonism  between  the  slave-holding  and  the  non- 
slave-holding  States.  At  first,  the  Southern  friends  of  the 
acquisition  sought  to  appease  the  discontents  of  its  Northern 
opponents  by  representing  that  the  terms  of  the  treaty  made 
with  France  did  not  bind  the  United  States  to  admit  any 
new  States  carved  out  of  this  territory.  It  was  so  represented 
by  John  Taylor,  of  Caroline,  in  the  Senate,  and  by  John 
Randolph,  of  Roanoke,  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  It 
was  a  flimsy  pretence  which  deceived  nobody.  In  due  time, 
Louisiana  was  admitted  as  a  State,  but  not  until  Josiah 
Quincy,  of  Massachusetts,  had  proclaimed,  on  the  floor  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  that  by  that  act  "  the  bonds  of  the 
Union  were  virtually  dissolved  ;  that  the  States  which  then 
compose'd  it  were  free  from  their  moral  obligations,  and  that 
as  it  was  the  right  of  all,  so  it  would  be  the  duty  of  some,  to 

*  Annals  of  Fifth  Congress,  vol.  ii.,  p.  1306. 


TJic  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  33 

prepare  definitely  for  a  separation — amicably  if  they  can, 
violently  if  they  must."  It  was  the  voice  of  the  eloquent 
Northern  Gracchus  protesting  that  the  tabernacle  of  the  Con- 
stitution, beneath  which  Massachusetts  sat,  could  not  be 
stretched  "  to  form  a  covering  for  the  inhabitants  of  the  Mis- 
souri and  the  Red  River  country."  * 

The  controversy  which  arose  on  the  admission  of  Missouri 
was  but  the  normal  projection  and  culmination  of  the  feud 
opened  by  the  Louisiana  purchase ;  and  the  compromise  by 
which  that  controversy  was  temporarily  composed  did  but 
give  formal  expression  to  a  geographical  line  of  partition  be- 
tween the  two  sections.  The  idea  which  had  before  been 
implicit  in  our  politics  now  became  explicit.  It  was  this  fact 
which  gave  to  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  its  tremendous 
significance  in  the*  eyes  of  Mr.  Jefferson.  He  said  that  the 
question  awoke  him  "  like  a  fire-bell  in  the  night."  He  pre- 
dicted that  such  a  line  of  demarcation  between  the  two  sec- 
tions, when  once  conceived  and  held  up  to  the  angry  passions 
of  men,  would  never  be  obliterated,  but  would  be  marked 
deeper  and  deeper  by  every  new  irritation. 

In  studying  our  history  by  its  epoch-making  events,  we 
have  to  note  that,  with  the  advent  of  the  Missouri  question, 
the  slavery  polemic  in  our  country  passed  from  the  forum  of 
economical  discussion  and  ethical  debate  into  the  arena  of 
politics.  The  epoch  of  this  transition  has,  therefore,  I  repeat, 
a  tremendous  significance  in  our  annals.  Forty  years  later, 
the  polemic  passed  from  the  arena  of  politics  into  the  field  of 
battle  and  shock  of  arms. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  first  lull  of  the  political  storm  excited 
by  the  Missouri  question,  the  southeastern  limits  of  the 
United  States  had  been  rounded  off  by  the  purchase  of 
Florida  from  Spain,  which  was  concluded  in  1821.  The  ac- 
quisition was  so  obviously  required  by  considerations  of 
national  advantage  and  territorial  symmetry  that  it  evoked 
no  opposition,  except  from  those  who  saw  in  the  limited 
terms  of  the  treaty  a  renunciation  of  certain  territorial  pre- 
tensions based  on  the  supposed  extent  of  the  Louisiana  pur- 

*  Speeches  of  Josiah  Quincy,  pp.  196,  214. 
3 


34  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

chase.  Yet  President  Monroe  acknowledged  that  he  took, 
by  the  Florida  treaty,  less  territory  than  Spain  was  willing  to 
grant,  because  of  the  repugnance  with  which  the  Eastern 
part  of  the  Union  had  long  viewed  the  aggrandizement  of 
the  country  towards  the  South  and  West.  So  even  here  the 
spectre  of  sectional  discord  loomed  above  the  horizon  of  our 
national  diplomacy.* 

Moreover,  the  State  of  Maine  was  admitted  into  the  Un- 
ion, about  this  time,  as  a  counterpoise  to  Missouri,  just  as 
Kentucky  and  Vermont  had  been  almost  simultaneously  ad- 
mitted as  counteracting  make-weights  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Government  under  the  present  Constitution.  The  idea 
of  a  balance  of  power  between  the  trading  and  the  planting 
States  had  formed  the  basis  of  a  compromise  reached  be- 
tween these  States  in  the  formation  of  the'Constitution.  In 
the  progress  of  events,  this  balance  had  been  transferred  from 
economics  to  politics,  and,  therefore,  from  States  pitted 
against  each  other  by  a  difference  in  their  industries  to 
States  pitted  against  each  other  by  a  difference  in  their 
social  systems  and  political  ideas.  That  is,  the  sectional 
equilibrium  of  the  States  comprised  in  the  Union,  from  be- 
ing avowedly  economical  and  latently  political,  had  now 
become  avowedly  political  and  latently  economical.  It  is 
true  that,  in  the  closing  years  of  his  service  as  a  Senator 
from  New  York,  Rufus  King  had  offered  an  olive-branch 
for  the  pacification  of  the  standing  feud  between  the  sections. 
He  proposed  that  the  proceeds  of  the  sales  of  the  public 
lands  should  be  applied  to  the  emancipation  of  slaves  and  to 
their  colonization  outside  of  the  United  States.  His  plan  of 
"  compensated  emancipation"  awoke  no  echo  at  the  time — 
it  came  too  soon  for  men  whose  ears  were  tingling  with  the 
strife  of  tongues — and  when  the  echo  did  come,  in  the  days 
of  Abraham  Lincoln  it  came  too  late  for  men  whose  ears 
were  stunned  by  the  clash  of  arms.  The  Gulf  Stream  of 
American  politics  will  henceforth  be  found  in  the  trend  of 
our  national  debates  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  considered  in 
its  relation  to  the  sectional  equilibrium  between  the  North 
*  Benton  :  Thirty  Years'  View,  vol.  L,  p.  15. 


Tlie  Land  Politics  of  tlic  United  States.  35 

and  the  South,  and  this  sectional  equilibrium  will  henceforth 
be  dressed  and  redressed  within  the  Territories  as  the  favor- 
ite seat  of  its  oscillations. 

It  was  this  consideration  which  gave  to  the  annexation  of 
Texas  its  chief  significance.  Party  lines  as  to  this  measure 
were  not,  it  is  true,  distinctly  drawn  on  geographical  prem- 
ises, but  nobody  doubts  that  it  was  the  bearing  of  the  ques- 
tion on  the  sectional  equilibrium  which  procured  for  the 
project  its  warm  support  at  the  South,  and  its  warm  opposi- 
tion at  the  North.  When  the  question  of  annexation  was 
first  mooted,  in  1837,  John  Quincy  Adams  avowed  the  "  sol- 
emn belief"  that  its  consummation  "  would  be,  ipso facto,  a 
dissolution  of  the  Union  ;  "  and  on  the  eve  of  its  consumma- 
tion, in  1844,  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  declared  that 
such  an  act  of  admission  would  have  "  no  binding  force 
whatever  "  on  the  people  of  that  State — a  passionate  threat 
which  soon  gave  way  before  the  sober  second  thought  of  her 
people  as  expressed  by  the  patriotic  toast  of  her  honored 
son,  Robert  C.  Winthrop  :  "  Our  country,  hozvever  bounded, 
still  our  country."  The  extension  of  slave  territory  as  an 
element  of  political  power  was  at  this  time  justified  by 
Southern  statesmen,  not  only  in  our  domestic  politics  but 
even  in  our  international  diplomacy.  Interpreting  the  an- 
nexation of  Texas  to  Mr.  Pakenham,  the  British  minister  at 
Washington,  Mr.  Calhoun,  then  Secretary  of  State,  wrote  as 
follows,  under  date  of  April  18,  1844  :  "  That  which  is  called 
slavery  is  really  a  political  institution,  essential  to  the  peace, 
safety,  and  prosperity  of  those  States  of  the  Union  in  which 
it  exists."  * 

Then  came  the  war  with  Mexico,  a  natural  though  not  an 
inevitable  sequel  of  the  annexation  of  Texas.  The  war,  in 
its  latter  stages,  was  prosecuted  with  an  avowed  sectional 
purpose — the  aggrandizement  of  the  Southern  States  by  the 
acquisition  of  new  territory  from  which  to  carve  out  new 
States  to  redress  the  wavering  balance  of  power  in  favor  of  pro- 
slavery  politics.  The  Representatives  and  Senators  of  a  major- 
ity of  the  Northern  States  threw  the  "  Wilmot  proviso"  in 
*  Twenty-eighth  Congress,  First  Session  ;  Senate  Document  341,  p.  53. 


36  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

the  opposite  scale  of  the  political  balance.  From  this  time 
forth  the  bitter  waters  of  our  political  strife  were  a  Marah 
which  never  grew  sweet,  and  a  Meribah  which  knew  no  calm. 
In  vain  was  it  proposed  by  the  South  that  the  Missouri 
Compromise  line  should  be  extended  to  the  Pacific.  In  vain 
was  it  proposed  by  the  North  that  an  absolute  interdict 
should  be  formally  put  on  the  spread  of  slavery  in  any  and 
every  direction.  In  vain  was  it  hoped  that  the  sectional 
feud  had  been  composed  by  the  compromise  measures  of 
1850 — a  series  of  measures  in  which  we  meet  precisely  the 
same  attempted  reconciliation  of  irreconcilable  elements 
which  has  already  met  us  in  the  formation  of  the  Ordinance 
of  1787 — for,  as  in  1787  the  Southern  States  accepted  an  in- 
hibition on  the  spread  of  slavery  into  the  Northwestern  Ter- 
ritory if  they  could  be  favored  with  a  compact  for  the  ren- 
dition of  slaves,  so  now,  in  1850,  they  accepted  the  admission 
of  California  as  a  free  State,  and  even  the  prohibition  of  the 
slave  traffic  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  if  they  could  be 
favored  with  a  more  stringent  law  for  the  recaption  of  their 
fugitive  slaves. 

Four  years  later  came  the  formal  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  with  a  fatuous  effort  to  effect  a  new  solution  of 
the  slavery  problem  by  changing  the  field  of  its  discussion 
from  Congress  to  the  Territories.  The  people  of  each  Ter- 
ritory were  to  be  free  to  prohibit  or  to  establish  slavery, 
"subject  only  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,"  as 
expounded  by  the  Supreme  Court.  This  latter  clause  was 
the  skulking  Guy  Fawkes,  secreted,  with  powder  and  dark 
lantern,  in  the  Kansas  and  Nebraska  bill,  for  the  explosion  of 
the  stately  edifice  reared  on  the  basis  of  "  Squatter  Sover- 
eignty." Under  the  lead  of  this  essentially  agrarian  insti- 
tute, the  question  of  slavery  passed  from  Congress  to  the 
Territorial  Legislatures  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  ;  from  these 
courts  of  political  pie  poudre  it  passed  to  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  ;  from  the  Supreme  Court  it  passed  to 
the  Dred  Scott  decision  ;  from  the  Dred  Scott  decision  it 
passed  to  a  sectional  scramble  of  immigrants  from  the  North 
and  from  the  South  for  the  first  occupation  of  the  disputed 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  37 

territory  ;  from  the  scramble  of  angry  and  hostile  immigrants 
it  passed  to  armed  politics  in  Kansas  ;  from  the  tussle  of 
armed  politics  in  Kansas  it  passed  to  the  formation  of  a 
powerful  political  party,  organized  in  every  Northern  State, 
for  a  determined  resistance  to  the  further  spread  of  slavery 
on  the  North  American  continent.  As  to  the  rest  of  this 
eventful  history,  is  it  not  written  in  the  election  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  ;  in  the  attempted  secession  of  eleven  slave-holding 
States  ;  in  the  Titanic  War  for  the  Union  ;  in  the  abolition 
of  slavery  by  Constitutional  Amendment  ;  and  in  the  social 
and  economic  unification,  for  the  first  time,  of  the  whole 
American  people  within  the  bounds  of  their  common  Union? 
Henceforth  we  may  labor  for  social  and  economic  progress 
without  disturbance  from  the  jar  and  jostle  of  the  old  sec- 
tional equilibrium. 

From  this  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  of  our  history, 
it  will  be  seen  that  the  public  lands,  as  complicated  with 
two  distinct  classes  of  States  differently  endowed  under  this 
head ;  or  as  complicated  with  two  distinct  political  economies; 
or  as  complicated  with  two  distinct  social  systems  comprised 
in  the  same  Union,  have  been  the  great  controlling  factor  in 
our  Federal  politics.  At  each  stage  of  our  national  progress, 
we  mark  the  presence  of  an  unstable  political  equilibrium, 
produced  by  an  antagonism  of  sectional  interests,  and  this 
oscillation  has  always  reached  its  highest  ascension  and 
widest  sweep  in  what  Grayson,  of  Virginia,  called,  in  1788, 
"  a  contest  for  empire  "  through  the  possession  of  territory  as 
the  seat  and  source  of  political  power  in  the  Union.  At  the 
very  threshold  of  our  national  life,  in  the  formation  of  the 
Articles  of  Confederation,  it  was  a  question  between  the 
landed  and  the  landless  States.  At  the  opening  of  the  Phila- 
delphia Convention  in  1787,  it  was  at  first  a  question  between 
the  large  and  the  small  States,  and  when  this  ground  of  dis- 
crimination was  lost  from  sight  in  the  equality  of  suffrage, 
conceded  alike  to  small  and  to  large  States,  in  the  Senate,  it 
became  a  question  of  comparative  political  power  between 
the  planting  and  the  trading  States.  This  economic  distinc- 
tion between  these  two  classes  of  States  was  really  produced 


38  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

by  the  presence  of  slavery  in  the  one  section,  and  by  its  ab- 
sence from  the  other.  As  this  fact  became  more  and  more 
obtrusive,  the  lines  of  party  formation  in  the  United  States 
tended  more  and  more  to  coincide  with  the  geographical 
boundaries  which  separated  these  two  divergent  social  sys- 
tems from  each  other,  and  this  schism  in  our  body  politic 
always  came  to  its  clearest  line  of  cleavage  in  questions  about 
territory,  as  the  earnest  and  pledge  of  political  power.  It 
was  nominally  a  struggle  for  the  territories  on  the  borders  of 
the  Union.  It  was  really  a  struggle  for  empire  in  the  Gov- 
ernment at  Washington.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end 
of  our  annals,  it  is  questions  of  land  which  have  always 
created  the  great  friction  points  and  burning  points  of 
American  politics.  The  "  irrepressible  conflict,"  in  its  form, 
was  an  agrarian  struggle.  It  was  agrarian  ambition  which, 
for  a  season,  made  Virginia  unwilling  to  cede  her  public 
lands.  It  was  an  agrarian  clamor  for  equal  rights  in  the  com- 
mon lands  which  made  New  Jersey  and  Delaware  loath  to 
sign  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  and  which  caused  Mary- 
land to  hold  out  in  stubborn  resistance  for  the  term  of  five 
long  and  weary  years.  It  was  a  feeling  of  agrarian  inequal- 
ity which  pitted  the  small  States  against  the  large,  in  the 
opening  discussions  of  the  Philadelphia  Convention.  And, 
finally,  it  was  a  question  of  territorial  politics,  growing  more 
and  more  clearly  defined  between  the  slave-holding  and  non- 
slave-holding  States,  which  at  last  brought  "  these  two  great 
repulsive  masses  "  into  the  collision  and-shock  of  our  Civil  War. 
It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  Valley  of  Wyoming,  before  the 
Constitution  was  formed,  to  the  plains  of  Kansas,  where  our 
Civil  War  found  its  first  prelusive  skirmish  ;  but  the  contro- 
versy in  Wyoming  was  a  small  battle  in  which  territorial  poli- 
tics were  accentuated  with  flint-locks,  while  the  controversy 
in  Kansas  was  a  large  battle  in  which  territorial  politics  were 
accentuated  with  Sharpe's  rifles.  In  Wyoming,  it  was  a  con- 
troversy between  the  Susquehanna  Land  Company  of  Con- 
necticut and  the  henchmen  of  the  Penn  proprietary  and  his 
assigns.  In  Kansas,  it  was  a  controversy  between  the  New 
England  Emigrant  Company  and  the  "  Border  Ruffians  "  of 


The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States.  39 

Missouri.  In  Wyoming,  the  controversy  ultimated  in  an 
abortive  attempt  to  carve  a  new  free  State — the  so-called 
State  of  Westmoreland — out  of  the  flanks  of  Pennsylvania. 
In  Kansas,  the  controversy  ultimated  in  an  abortive  attempt 
to  carve  a  new  slave  State  out  of  soil  which  had  been  dedi- 
cated to  freedom.  In  Wyoming,  the  hotbed  of  territorial 
politics  produced  a  partisan  leader  obscurely  known  to  his- 
tory by  the  name  of  John  Franklin.  In  Kansas,  the  hotbed 
of  territorial  politics  produced  a  partisan  leader  conspicuously 
known  to  history  by  the  name  of  John  Brown.  From  Wyo- 
ming to  Kansas,  and  from  Kansas  to  "  States  dissevered,  dis- 
cordant, belligerent,"  the  combat  was  constantly  deepening 
in  its  elements  and  in  its  issues,  but  it  is  always  a  combat 
about  land. 

As  it  was,  in  its  form,  a  territorial  struggle  which  precipi- 
tated the  great  political  land-slide  attempted  by  the  seceding 
States  in  1861,  so  it  was  a  modification  of  that  same  struggle, 
placed  now  on  a  military  footing,  which  helped  to  close  our 
"  bloody  chasm."  If  considerations  of  Federal  politics  had 
conspired  with  the  physical  geography  of  the  country,  and 
with  its  economic  necessities,  to  dictate  the  acquisition  of 
Louisiana  in  1803,  this  same  physical  geography,  and  these 
same  economic  necessities,  conspired  with  our  Federal  poli- 
tics, in  1861,  to  decree  that  there  should  be  no  scission  in  the 
political  geography  of  the  country,  and  that  no  rival  nation 
should  be  in  a  position  to  debar  "  the  great  West  "  from  its 
natural  right  to  the  free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  River. 
The  secession  of  Louisiana  and  of  her  sister  States  in  the 
South  and  Southwest  opened,  it  is  true,  a  dreadful  chasm 
in  the  forum  of  our  national  politics,  but  into  that  dreadful 
chasm  the  armed  chivalry  of  the  land  continued  to  run  for 
four  long  years,  after  the  manner  of  Curtius  in  the  old  Roman 
myth,  until  at  last  the  chasm  was  closed.  The  very  acquisi- 
tion of  foreign  territory,  and  its  incorporation  into  our  body 
politic,  which  seemed  to  Josiah  Ouincy,  in  1811,  a  sufficient 
cause  for  dissolving  the  Union,  became,  in  1861,  our  coigne 
of  vantage  in  battling  for  "  an  indestructible  Union  of  inde- 
structible States." 


40  The  Land  Politics  of  the  United  States. 

When  that  steadfast  Abdiel  of  the  Union  in  South  Car- 
olina, the  late  James  L.  Petigru,  was  first  informed  on  the 
streets  of  Charleston,  in  1861,  that  Louisiana  had  passed  an 
ordinance  of  secession,  he  exclaimed  :  "  Well,  well,  that  is 
too  bad  !  Perhaps  some  show  of  argument  may  be  made 
for  the  pretended  right  of  secession  in  one  of  the  old  thirteen 
States  which  made  the  Union  and  the  Constitution,  but— 
Louisiana?  By  the  infernal  gods!  we  bought  that  State, 
and  she  certainly  has  no  right  to  take  herself  out  of  the 
Union  !  "  The  grim  pleasantry  of  the  saying  was  meant  to 
point  a  deeper  moral — the  moral  that  the  political  geography 
of  the  country  is  inextricably  blended  with  the  physical 
geography  of  the  country,  and  that  what  God  has  joined 
together  no  man  can  put  asunder.  Just  one  hundred  years 
ago  William  Grayson,  of  Virginia,  saw,  as  in  prophetic  vi- 
sion, that  the  Mississippi  Valley  was  to  be  the  vallev  of  de- 
cision for  the  swarming  multitudes  of  the  South  and  West  in 
their  "  contest  for  empire  "  with  the  North  and  East.  The 
real  tug  of  the  contest  came  in  a  way  which  he  foresaw  as 
little  as  Josiah  Quincy,  of  Massachusetts,  foresaw  its  destined 
outcome  ;  for  when  the  smoke  of  battle  was  lifted  from  the 
bloody  lists,  at  the  close  of  our  Civil  War,  it  was  seen  that  the 
Mississippi  Valley  had  put  its  determining  weight  in  the  scale 
of  freedom,  and  not,  as  some  men  wished  and  as  other  men 
feared,  in  the  scale  of  slavery.  The  agrarian  politics  of  the 
North  were  sometimes  as  short-sighted  as  the  agrarian  politics 
of  the  South,  but  in  all  this  strife,  whether  of  tongues  or  of 
swords,  the  stars  in  their  courses  were  fighting  for,  "  Liberty 
and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable." 


;  iUU  I  HtHN  HttilUN/M-  LIBHAH 


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